whether the dislike to this rhythm is so strong and so wide-spread that it will prevent its ever becoming thoroughly familiar. I think not, but it is too soon to decide. I am inclined to think that the dislike of it is rather among the professional critics than among the general public; I think the reception which Mr Longfellow's Evangeline has met with indicates this. I think that even now, if a version of the Iliad in English hexameters were made by a poet who, like Mr Longfellow, has that indefinable quality which renders him popular, something attractive in his talent, which communicates itself to his verses, it would have a great success among the general public. Yet a version of Homer in hexameters of the Evangeline type would not satisfy the judicious, nor is the definite establishment of this type to be desired; and one would regret that Mr Longfellow should, even to popularise the hexameter, give the immense labour required for a translation of Homer when one could not wish his work to stand. Rather it is to be wished that by the efforts of poets like Mr Longfellow in original poetry, and the efforts of less distinguished poets in the task of translation, the hexameter may gradually be made familiar to the ear of the English public; at the same time that there gradually arises, out of all these efforts, an improved type of this rhythm; a type which some man of genius
